How can we store password other than plain text?

Question

I've found numerous posts on stackoverflow on how to store user passwords. However, I need to know what is the best way to store a password that my application needs to communicate with another application via the web? Currently, our web app needs to transmit data to a remote website. To upload the data, our web app reads the password from a text file and creates the header with payloads and submits via https.

This password in plain text on the file system is the issue. Is there any way to store the password more securely?

This is a linux os and the application is written in python and is not compiled.

Further clarification: There are no users involved in this process at all. The password stored in the file system is used by the other web app to authenticate the web app that is making the request. To put it in the words of a commenter below: "In this case, the application is the client to another remote application."

Answer 1

From the question it seems you need to store password in such a way, that it can be read and used in an automated transaction with another site. You could encrypt the password and store it encrypted in the file, then decrypt it using a key stored elsewhere in your system before using it. This makes difficulties to someone that gets access to the file from using the password, as they now have to find the key and encryption algorithm used, so they can decrypt it.

As defense, more lesser defense is always better than one strong defense that fails when breached. Moreover, I would also secure the file containing the password, rather than the password itself. Configure your webserver to disable possibility to serve the file containing the password, and try to set the process needing the file to run under a separate account, so you can restrict the access to the file to account running the process and admin accounts only.